


Penumbraluna

by lokilickedme



Series: Chemical Prehistories [11]
Category: Native American/First Nations Mythology, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Acceptance, Affection, Affectionate Insults, Aftermath of Violence, Alpha Males, Anal Sex, Anger, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Blood, Blood and Injury, Boys Kissing, Broken Families, Bromance, Brother Feels, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brotherly Affection, Canon Backstory, Character Analysis, Chemical history, Comfort/Angst, Consensual Underage Sex, Dom/sub Undertones, Domestic Violence, Dominance, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Emotionally Repressed, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Heavy Angst, Homelessness, Illegal Activities, Implied/Referenced Blow Jobs, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Kissing, M/M, Major Character Injury, Male Bonding, Male Friendship, Male Slash, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Non-Explicit Sex, Past Underage Sex, Past Violence, Self-Acceptance, Self-Defense, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sex, Sexual Content, Sexual Violence, Submission, Teen Angst, Teen Years, Threats of Violence, Underage Kissing, Underage Prostitution, Underage Sex, Violence, lifelong friendship, mutual affection, teen Chem!Chris, teen Chem!Tom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-05-22 01:10:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6065182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokilickedme/pseuds/lokilickedme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prequel to Chemical.  Long before Tom met Anja, he was a fifteen year old runaway just trying to save his sister and survive any way he knew how.  But not every curveball that life sends us is meant to throw us off our game...some end up showing us the way, in ways we would never expect.  </p><p>I recommend reading Chemical first if you haven't - this little story explains many small details and hints that are peppered through it.  Covers the years from age 15 to 21 for Chem!Tom.</p><p>In response to a special request from a group of fans that I just couldn't say no to :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mayipipon

                       

 

 

 

 

_**Penumbraluna:  A lunar eclipse that occurs when the Moon passes through the Earth’s partial shadow, or penumbra. During this type of eclipse the Moon will darken slightly but not completely.** _

__

##  **Saskachewan Plains Cree:[mayipipon](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.creedictionary.com%2Fsearch%2Findex.php%3Fq%3Dmayipipon%26scope%3D1%26cwr%3D15793&t=Y2NlZWZlYjIxY2RkNGQ4MDJhZTVmYzU1YWU3YmQ0ZjliZWEyNDQ4MSxXcndsQ3NZZQ%3D%3D)  - ᒪᔨᐱᐳᐣ  : (noun):  A bad winter.**

**…………**

**First Winter**

**…………**

_**“I will fucking kill you if you touch me.”** _

The blade was sticking out of the crumbling wall at eye level, inches from his head, the hilt still vibrating.  Something told him with no uncertainty the miss had been intentional.

“Okay, I believe you.”  

The two boys stood the length of a room apart, one a trespasser, the other an intruder.  The bigger of the two eyed the other boy carefully, noting how skinny he was - tall, built strong, but thin from hunger, wheezing from sickness, weak from sleeping in the cold for too long.  He could take him, but it would be messy. 

“How about I just back away and we forget each other exists?”  

He could only see one eye under that messy black hair, falling over one side of the skinny boy’s face…he was peering at him with a cold mixture of hatred and something softer, something hurting, something that looked like it just wanted to be smiled at with sincerity.  Something that said he hadn’t been in a very, very long time.  Blue like the ocean, even in the dim light.  Something somewhere inside him wanted to reach for him, to push back that shiny black mess and see if the other eye was any less haunted, to see if he would respond to a sincere smile if it was offered.  To see if he would even recognize one when it came.

“Are you hungry?”

He didn’t know why he asked, he didn’t have any food on him.  But the boy had that starved, too thin for too long look to him, the look that said he’d slit your throat for the pack of skittles in your pocket.  There was no answer, but he’d expected that…there was only the tightly coiled posture of readiness, a feral reaction waiting to spring to life from the still statue of the boy’s body.

“Okay, well I’m gonna go…you can come if you want.”

Again, no response, only the unblinking stare, the perfect stillness, and the sound of labored breathing.   _He sounds bad._  "Come on, it’s fucking freezing in here.  You’re gonna be dead by morning.“

The boy coughed, a violent, rasping spasm that echoed through what sounded like a hollow chest.

"Yep, dead by morning.  I’d come back tomorrow and rob your skinny corpse but you look like you’ve got about fifty diseases, I’m not sure I’d want to touch you.”

_“Fuck you.”_

The older boy laughed, shaking his head.  A long moment passed as the two continued staring each other down…and then the younger boy spoke again, his voice less threatening now, tinged heavily with an accent that didn’t sit quite right with the surroundings and the situation as he sat down on the makeshift bed, that blue gaze steeling into a hard silver glare.

“If you want me to suck your cock, you’re going to have to feed me first.  I’m so hungry I’m about to throw up.”

A hard blink, the ugly words registering slowly.  The reply, when it came, was somewhat bemused.

“I don’t want you to suck my cock.”

Something twitched in the half hidden face as the boy finally broke his stare, casting his gaze toward the floor.  The defiant straightness went out of his shoulders and he slumped, just for a moment, before standing to unbuckle his dirty jeans. The older boy put a hand out without thinking, a gesture of hurried refusal, taking a step back, shaking his head.  "Hey no, wait - I don’t want _that_ either.“  

The black haired boy froze, confusion first, then relief coming to the half of his face that was visible.  His big, bony hands brought his belt back together, buckling it tight as he sat down again.  The bigger boy forced a smile, something to tell him he hadn’t lost his favor.

"I’m not into that.”

There was a long, tense moment before the younger boy spoke.

“I’m not either.”

He couldn’t leave him.  This was his cue to exit, but he couldn’t bring himself to walk away.  "Just show me that trick you did with the knife again, that was cool.“

The boy on the bed didn’t smile, but something brightened in his face.

"Come on, I know you’ve got another blade on you.”  He didn’t move toward him, barely moved at all, just a small nod of his head to urge him.  "Show me.“

Reaching slowly behind his back, the boy brought out a knife no larger than a letter opener. _Just big enough to carve someone’s eye out._  There was no doubt in either’s mind he could do it.  He tossed it into the air carelessly, catching it by the tip with ease before he drew back, taking aim at the wall next to the other boy’s head.

"Don’t move.”

“Oh I won’t.”  A smile spread across the older boy’s face as he tapped himself on the chest.   _“Chris_ \- you know, in case you need a name for when you brag about who you killed tonight.”

A slow nod as the skinny boy pushed his hair back out of his face, tucking it behind his ears, unhindering his view of his target and the other boy’s view of his eyes.  The blue exposed and unhidden now, as shockingly bright as he’d imagined.  Not blue, no… _turquoise,_ like the big blue-green stones you could buy at the roadside markets in the desert.

In that moment when he pulled his arm back, in the few short seconds before he let the blade fly, he noticed the bigger boy didn’t flinch.  Didn’t close his eyes, didn’t move, didn’t avert his stare, didn’t lose his grin.  In that moment he knew, though he didn’t understand why… _this boy trusted him._

The hand without the knife came up and he touched himself on the chest in imitation of the other’s gesture, just barely, almost like it hurt.

_“Tom.”_

_To be continued…_


	2. Nakateyim

 

 

**_Cwtch:_ A Welsh word that most closely translates to “safe place,” but actually refers to a certain type of affectionate hug — by giving someone a “cwtch,” you’re providing them with a “safe place.”**

##  **_Saskachewan Plains Cree:  N[akateyim](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.creedictionary.com%2Fsearch%2Findex.php%3Fq%3Dnakateyim%26scope%3D1%26cwr%3D16499&t=YmQzNDYwYWFkYTI0ZjkyNjQ0ZmRjZTc2MzVhYWYwMTIwOTUzNjg4Niw0UUg2ME5lVg%3D%3D) ᓇᑲᑌᔨᒼ  - Verb - Meaning “Care for him” or “Look after him”_ **

**_……………_ **

 

 

“Chris, come set the ta - _oh.”_   The woman looked at the two boys, past her son at the dark haired, pale boy behind him.  "A guest for dinner?“ she asked, nodding, already expressing her approval.

"Yeah mom.  That okay?”

“Of _course.”_  She smiled, pushing Chris past her, looking the other boy over with more concern for her pristine white lace tablecloth than judgement.  Dirty, skinny, a dangerous look to him.  Obviously hungry.   _Soft eyes._  When she spoke to him her voice took on a softness to match it.  "Do you like spaghetti?“

"Yes ma'am.”

“Good, because that’s what we’re having.  Go wash up, you look like you’ve been mudwrestling.”

“Yes ma'am.  Sorry.”

Chris turned to look at him, shocked to hear such polite manners coming from that dirty mouth.  There was even the barest hint of a smile, though it vanished as soon as he looked.  

“Come on.”

Halfway to the bathroom, he realized the boy wasn’t behind him.  He turned and saw him, hesitating, looking nervously toward the front door.  When he noticed Chris was staring questioningly at him, the boy dragged his eyes away and stood straight.

“I need to go get my things.”

Chris shot him a bullshit face.  "You don’t _have_ any things.“

"Fuck you - ”

A heavy sigh, but Chris kept his voice down and made a conscious effort not to make any move toward him, something he learned from years of his mother bringing in feral stray dogs.  One careless move would get you bitten.

“Look I know you’re trying to sneak out, that’s cool, I understand.  But my mom’s gonna cry if she thinks she failed to save some poor stray so for her sake would you at least take a shower, eat the damn spaghetti, and say thank you before you disappear?  She’ll be easier to live with.”

Deep apprehension clouded his face, but the boy finally relented and hesitantly followed him into the bathroom.  It went against everything he’d taught himself - _never follow anyone into a place with no easy exits.  Never let anyone take you into a bathroom.  Never go anywhere secluded with anyone bigger than you._  But he went anyway, his hands shaking, his mouth going dry with that sick acceptance he’d gotten used to.   _Just go along.  Get where you’re going.  Do what it takes.  Keep the mom happy, there’s food here.  Then get out._

The bathroom seemed claustrophobically tiny when he stepped inside it, with Chris’s big bulk filling up the space.  He kept well away from him, skirting along the wall, staying close to the door.  Chris pretended not to notice as he got a towel and washcloth from the pantry and set them out on the sink.

“Hot water’s a little weird - just jiggle the knob till it kicks in.  Soap, shampoo, all that stuff is in there, use whatever, mom won’t care.  I don’t guess you shave yet.”  He eyed Tom’s face, trying to guess how old he was.  There was no stubble on his cheeks or chin, not even a shadow.  "Not sure I want to give you access to a razor anyway, you might slit my throat and steal my garlic bread.“ He gave the boy a grin as he held his hand out.  “Speaking of which - here, don’t want you passing out from hunger and cracking your skull open on the side of the tub.”

In his big hand was a piece of garlic bread.

“I swiped it from the kitchen.  Here - “  He pushed it toward the boy, watching the way he backed up before finally reaching out to take it.  "I’ll get you some clothes, go ahead and shower up, nobody’ll bother you.  Hurry up though ‘cause I’m hungry.”

The door closed, and the voices of the boy and his mother came through it a moment later, muffled and unclear.  Tom stood by the door quietly eating the bread, listening for any hint of anger in their conversation, any sign that he should go now. There was none. The lack of aggression and calm, happy tone of their voices confused him and he furrowed his brow, ignoring the pain in his stomach as it adjusting to finally having some food in it.

_There were really families that treated each other that way?_ He remembered it being like that before, when his dad was with them…but after that, there was nothing but yelling and hurtful words.  It was all that made sense to him now.

Several long minutes later he still hadn’t undressed.  Standing in the middle of the little bathroom, looking around, trying to decide if he should go through the window over the toilet or just resign himself to being babysat by that big blond lout and his bleedingheart mother…but she seemed _nice,_ and he’d had a shortage of niceness recently…the boy was bossy but he was big, obviously strong, it never hurt to have someone tough to watch your back.  Maybe he would stay for dinner and figure the rest out later.

The lure of being clean again finally pulled too hard for him to ignore any longer. His hair hadn’t been washed since his last stay in a motel room, somewhere in Arizona.  A businessman from Salt Lake City with a suitcase full of strange toys. He’d been nice to him, let him clean up and take a long hot shower before showing him all his things, giving him a silver cock ring the next morning after a big hot breakfast in the room.  It was still in his pocket.  A reminder that people could be twisted as fuck but still be kind.

He slipped his hand into his pocket and felt it, fingers rubbing over the polished silver finish.  The last decency he’d been offered, in an indecent situation.

This house was full of kindness, he felt it in his bones.  

_Never walk away from compassion._ Alicia had told him that.

He dropped his clothes in a pile on the floor and turned on the hot water, jiggling the knob till it worked right.

……………………

He didn’t respond to the knock at the door;  he heard it, but was too blissed out from the warmth, the hot water washing away the filth of the road and the smell on his skin of the things he’d done to get this far down it.  It ran dirty for a few minutes until the grime was gone, then clouded up again when he soaped his hair.  When he looked down at his feet and finally saw clean, clear water swirling down the drain, he almost cried, it felt so good.

The knock came again, followed by Chris’s voice, asking if he was okay.  He turned off the water and reached for the towel, wrapping it around his hips as the door opened and a blond head poked in.

"Okay in here?  Thought maybe you - you know.”  He nodded his head toward the window as he laid a pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt on the sink.

“No.  I really like spaghetti.”

Chris laughed, then looked down at the little heap of dirty clothes on the floor next to the tub.  There was blood dried on the inside of the blue jeans.  When he looked up, the boy was staring at him, both a challenge and a pleading in his eyes as he held onto his towel.

“I’ll wash these,” Chris said, scooping them up.  He kept his face as neutral as he could manage, but he suddenly felt sick and sad and _angry,_ like he wanted to kill whoever had hurt this skinny kid, whoever had put that scared injured look of hatred in his eyes, whoever was responsible for _fuck you_ being the first thing to come out of his mouth in response to pretty much anything.   _Probably the same person who put those bruises on his hips,_ he thought bitterly, quickly averting his eyes.  It almost made him feel ashamed, but the idea of anyone manhandling the boy, leaving marks on that pale porcelain skin…a confusing mix of jealousy and fury rushed him and he felt his face going hot.

The younger boy’s eyes were still on him as he turned to leave, clutching the dirty bundle of clothes tightly to his chest.

_“Spaghetti’s ready,”_ was all he said, muttered almost inaudibly as he shut the door behind him.

 

 

_To be continued…_


	3. Awîyak ekâ ka sâkihekosit

 

 

##  **_A[wîyak ekâ ka sâkihekosit](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.creedictionary.com%2Fsearch%2Findex.php%3Fq%3Daw%25C3%25AEyak+ek%25C3%25A2+ka+s%25C3%25A2kihekosit%26scope%3D1%26cwr%3D54825&t=ZGI3ZTc5MjFmMTE3M2M5NjNkMzhkMGE3YWNmZjRkNzYxZTM4ZmI3OSxnY0swUHlrRQ%3D%3D) ᐊᐄᐧᔭᐠ  ᐁᑳ  ᑲ  ᓵᑭᐦᐁᑯᓯᐟ - An adjective meaning “loveless”_ **

##  ******************

“Stay with us,” she said, her hand reaching across the table toward him.  He stared at it, not moving.  Touch wasn’t something he could handle yet, at least not the kind she was offering.  Kindness ripped his soul, he wanted it but couldn’t bring himself to take it.  It didn’t belong to him.  It hurt too much to see it and not have it.

“I have a place to sleep.”

The hand was withdrawn, and his gut clenched.

“Where?  In an alley behind a bar?”  She turned her look to her son.   _Where did you find him?_  her eyes asked, a look he was far too familiar with.  She was in the mood to adopt a stray.

“The apartments on 12th.”  He answered without being asked, his eyes flitting quickly to the younger boy and then back to his plate, an unspoken apology for the betrayal.

“Those are abandoned.  That building is condemned.”  Her eyes burned the boy, a tone of chastisement in her voice, making him flinch, but there was no real bite to her words.  "And what were  _you_ doing there?“  She smacked Chris on the back of the head, making his hair fall over his eyes.  There was the slightest bit of an amused grin from the boy, his eyes fastened suddenly to his own plate as if he were afraid of being caught smiling.

"Exploring.”

“Looking for tetanus or a knife in the back, you mean.”  She shook her head, sighing.  The two boys met eyes for a brief moment, the merest hint of a smirk ghosting at the corners of both their mouths.

“Well, it’s too cold for you to be sleeping there with no electricity, you should stay with us for the night.”  She put more spaghetti on Tom’s plate and pushed it back in front of him.  Across the table he looked at Chris, wondering if his mother’s attention would make him hate him.  He was already wearing his clothes.  But Chris was nodding, chewing his food, as if it was nothing to him.

When they’d eaten, the boy took his dishes to the sink and began washing them. Chris and his mother exchanged a look of surprise, though neither of them said anything.   _He’s not so far gone that he doesn’t remember good guest manners. Someone taught him that.  Someone somewhere must love him._

“Did you get enough to eat, Tom?”

He gave her a shy look, a quick glance and a nod of his head, glossy black hair falling over one eye.  It was clean and shiny from his shower and it took all her strength of will not to reach out and push it back from his face so she could see those big blue eyes.  She moved close to him, sensed it when his back stiffened, but didn’t give in to the urge to retreat from his space quickly.

“Yes ma'am.”

He closed his eyes and she thought he might bolt away from her, but he didn’t…after a long moment he leaned in toward her and she realized he was inhaling deeply, as deeply as his rattling lungs would allow him, his eyes still tightly shut.

_She smells like a mom.  A good mom, the kind that would rock you back to sleep if you had a nightmare._

It was soothing and he found comfort in it, even though it was something he barely had any active memory of.  It had been a long time since his mother had been that kind of a mom.  A series of foster parents, none of them comfortable enough with him to show him any affection, had robbed him of what little recall he had of this smell.

She knew it was a risk to touch him - he was obviously averse to it, from the way he stayed just out of reach until this moment - but she couldn’t stop herself.  He was such a lost thing.  A beautiful boy with a spirit too young to be so bruised. The way he avoided looking her in the eyes, she knew he must have seen and done some things he would give anything to unsee and undo.  Things whose ghosts he didn’t want her to see dancing in the black of his pupils.

But life wasn’t often that generous with its second chances.

She let her fingers overlap onto his when she took the clean plate from his hand, just barely, the briefest of touches.

He flinched.  His eyes flew open and he remembered who he was, not who he used to be.  He handed her his plate to dry and stepped away from the sink, and from her.

_It’s not yours to ask for._

“Thank you for dinner, it was very good.”  


************************  


“This is _your_ room.”

“Yeah.  You got a problem with that?”

A small shake of his dark head, eyes darting suspiciously around the small room as if mapping exits, that trapped look he’d had upon first entering the house suddenly returning.

“You can sleep there, it’s closest to the heat register.”  Chris indicated the floor near the dresser, dragging a spare blanket out of the closet.  The boy’s eyes were on the bed, the longing look turning to acceptance as he took the blanket. A look that wasn’t lost on Chris.

“You can share with me if you want, but you’re not getting the whole thing.”  He shut the closet door, noticed how violently the boy flinched again, how his eyes clenched shut and he backed up a step.  He chose to ignore it rather than ask what his problem was;  he climbed into the bed and scooted to the side closest to the wall, turning onto his side, his back to the boy.

After a long moment Tom finally spoke.

“Are you sure you’re willing to share?  I could put a blade in your spine while you sleep.”

“You could do that sleeping on the floor.  Might as well be comfortable.”  Chris turned, looking back over his shoulder at him.  "But you won’t.  Now shut up and turn out the light.  Some of us have school tomorrow.“

A long silence followed after Chris reached over to turn off the bedside lamp;  he knew the boy was still standing there, clutching his blanket, probably trying to decide if he should leave or stay.  He left him alone… _let him do what he wants, I don’t give a shit.  Crazy skinny little asshole._

An intake of breath, then a tremulous voice in the dark.  One request, as much a plea as a demand. _"Don’t touch me.”_

“I won’t.”  He scooted over a little, tugging the blanket up to his neck.  "This is my side, that side’s yours.  You stay on yours and I’ll stay on mine.“  He looked back over his shoulder again.  "You’re not a bed wetter are you?”

“No.”

“Good.  Don’t fucking wet my bed.”

There was a long pause before the boy spoke again, so long that Chris had nearly fallen asleep.

“Stay on your side.”

“Fine,” he mumbled, scooting a little toward the center of the bed, reinforcing that it belonged to him and he’d sleep wherever he damn well pleased in it. “And if you’re gonna sneak out during the night there’s a coat in the closet by the door, take it.  It would break my mom’s heart if she found out about your skinny vagrant ass freezing to death.  Dude, I swear to god if you make my mom cry - ”

“You’re a mummy’s boy, aren’t you.”

“Yeah, fuck you.  Get in the damn bed or don’t, I don’t even care.”

There was a slight creaking of the bedsprings as the boy finally, slowly climbed in, keeping as far away as possible.  Chris listened to him settling, could tell that he was on the very edge of the mattress, probably with one foot on the floor. _Whatever.  He’ll be gone in the morning and I can have my bed back._

“Don’t - ”

“Yeah I know, don’t touch you, stay on my side, blah blah.  Buddy, you got nothin’ I’m interested in so go to fucking sleep already.”

  
*************************  


The boy coughed all night, a horrible, hollow, rattling cough that left him wheezing.  Chris sat up, staring at him in the darkness, ready to cuss him out for keeping him awake.  But that cough…it didn’t sound right.  He leaned over to listen more closely.

_“Don’t touch me!”_

“I won’t.  Just checking to see if you’re still breathing.”  He hovered over him, his big body blocking the light from the hallway.  The boy closed his eyes between struggling breaths and willed himself to relax.  

_“Please - ”_

It was barely more than a whisper, so quiet Chris almost didn’t hear it.  He moved away quickly, realization making him wince.  He was scaring the kid. Tom’s hands were gripping the sheets, his whole body tense.

“You want some cough medicine?”

The turquoise eyes opened and squinted distrustfully at him, not daring to believe that someone actually wanted to take care of him.  That someone cared enough to try.  He nodded hesitantly.

“You’re not gonna die during the night, are you?  Cuz dude, this is _my_ bed.”

A cold glare, fire and ice mixed with something just shy of loathing.  But his hands were unclenched, finally.  That was something.  Chris climbed over him, ignoring the way the boy flinched when he brushed against him, the way his eyes closed like he was accepting something he didn’t want to acknowledge. _What the fuck have you been doing that makes you so skittish, skinnyboy?_

  
************************  


The medicine was bitter, not the good cherry kind he remembered from when he was little.  But it numbed his throat and made his chest feel less heavy, so he drank it down without grimacing.  Once he’d swallowed, Chris reached out to touch his forehead.

_“Don’t -”_

“Dude, if you’ve got fever I don’t want you spreading your germs all over me, you’re gonna drool on my pillow and shit, plus coughing all over my stuff.  You want me to get my mom?”

“No.”  The answer was quick, maybe _too_ quick.  Tellingly quick.

“You scared of grownups?”

The glare he got in lieu of an answer told him more than he wanted to know.

“Look, my mom’s cool.  She works for a pharmacist part time, she can get you meds and stuff if you need it.  She can tell if you’re sick or if you’re just going to die and we don’t need to bother.”

His eyes had gone past him to the closet, that cold dread coming into them again.

“What the fuck is the deal with my closet?  You scared of closets?”

_“Quit asking me if I’m scared!”_

“Well are you?”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, I figured you were gonna say that.”

Standing, towering aggressively over the boy on the bed, Chris returned the glare.  "My room, my rules.  Rule number one, stop staring at my damn closet, it’s creeping me the fuck out.“  He went to it, opening the door, not failing to notice the near panic on the other boy’s face until nothing was revealed but clothes and shoes.  "See?  No monsters.”

“Leave it open.  Please.”

“Whatever.  Rule number two, drink the damn medicine and stop coughing all over my shit.  You’re keeping me awake and I have to be at school in - dammit, seven hours.  And rule number three, I swear to god if you make my mom cry I’m gonna hunt you down and murder your skinny ass.  So just, you know, settle in and let her feed you for a day or two, then if you still gotta clear out you can be my guest.  But I honestly don’t see anything better waiting for you back at that dump except maybe getting ass raped by some crackhead.”

As soon as he said it he wished he hadn’t.  He hadn’t looked too closely at the boy’s clothes as he dropped them into the washer, but he’d seen the state they were in, not least of all the blood stains.  He rushed past it.

“Deal?”

Their eyes locked during the long pause that followed, neither willing to look away, though Chris found it hard to hold the stare after a few seconds.  Those huge blue eyes, soulful and haunted and filled with hurt but so many other things as well.  Determination and humor and intelligence, and something else so deep and strong that he couldn’t put a word to it.

In the end he didn’t have to look away.  The boy turned, settling onto his side, pulling the blanket up to his chin.  His back was to Chris, the first gesture of trust he’d seen since he first laid eyes on him.

“Deal.”

 

_To be continued…_


	4. Etahtopiponewin

##  _**E[tahtopiponewin](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.creedictionary.com%2Fsearch%2Findex.php%3Fq%3Detahtopiponewin%26scope%3D1%26cwr%3D44073&t=OGUxY2UzOWM1YjNlZmU0Zjg0MDBmYjdlNzc4OWJkOTJlNDhjYzhlYSxjOWxURnVmdQ%3D%3D)** ᐁᑕᐦᑐᐱᐳᓀᐃᐧᐣ   Saskchewan Plains Cree:  Telling how old one is by how many winters they have lived_

**Saudade** (n.)  
Origin: Portuguese  
A nostalgic longing to be near again to something or someone that is distant, or that has been loved and then lost; “the love that remains”

_*************************************_

 

“Eighteen.”

“Bullshit.”  He was obviously lying.  There was no way that skinny boy was eighteen, he had barely grown into his feet yet.

“Believe it or don’t, I don’t really care.”

“Dude you don’t hardly even have any hair on your balls yet, you’re _not_ eighteen.”

The younger boy cast an annoyed look at him, his eyes falling to the open bit at the top of the bigger boy’s shirt.  He was already hairy chested and he’d seen him shaving that morning.  "I’m Cree, we’re not very hairy people - unlike big hulking viking types like yourself.“

"You’re what?”

“Cree.”

“You mean like indian?”

“Yes I mean like indian.”

Chris stared at him for a moment, disbelieving.  "Then why do you have blue eyes?“

"I’m half.”

“Why do you sound British?”

“I was born in London, my mum’s English.”

He thought about this for a moment, then shrugged it off.  The boy didn’t seem to be lying about any of it but his age - and if he was, what difference did it make? “Well dude, I’m seventeen, there’s no way you’re older than me.”

“Oh.”  A sheepish look came to his face;  he felt a little nervous at being called out on a lie.  Passing for eighteen had gotten him through a lot of situations on the road, earned him more than one stay in a warm hotel room where his true age would have never gotten him through the door.  But neither the bed nor the food at Chris’s house was dependent on him being legal.  Claiming to be older was just a habit now, a learned reaction.  His voice was quiet and a little bit guilty when he spoke again.  "I’ll be sixteen in April.“

"So you’re fifteen.”

He shot him a glare.   _“Yes I’m fifteen.”_

“Okay, just asking.”  There was a long silence between them where the truth found a place to settle.  "You been with a girl yet?“

"Yes.  Someone I met on the road in New Mexico.  She was…older.”

“Yeah?  Like how much older?”

“I don’t really know…I didn’t ask.  Late thirties I guess.”

“Wow.  Cougar and cub.  So you’ve only done it once.”

“No, we did it several times…like, all night.  But yeah, there’s only been her.”  He looked over at the other boy, suddenly curious.  His first time had been anything but typical.  "Have you done it yet?  With a girl?“

"Yeah…there’s this girl lived up the street, Eva.  She’s deaf.  Cute as hell.  We banged a couple times, but her family moved to Portland over the summer.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Yeah, I kinda do.”

Both boys went silent.

“Do you miss the chick in New Mexico?”

“I only met her the once, how can I miss her?”

“Well you spent the night with her…surely you got to know her a little.  Was she nice?”

“Yeah, she was nice.”  He closed his eyes, thought about her for a moment.  He could still see her face, smell her hair.  The bed was soft and so was her skin. And by the time they went their separate ways, by the time she walked out of the room the next morning in her tweed suit and high heels carrying her briefcase and flashing him a sadly reassuring smile, he knew everything he needed to know to get him where he was going.  

_Except how to forget her._

Her name was Alicia, but he wasn’t ready to share that with anyone yet.  For now she was just his, something he carried but couldn’t keep.

Chris nodded, understanding what hadn’t been said.  He looked at the sky, searching for something.

“Eva was nice too.  I hope she comes back.”

Tom nodded, searching the same sky without the same hope.

 

After a while they climbed down off the roof, Chris dropping noisily to the floor first from the attic crawlspace.  He watched as Tom lowered himself through, noting how quietly he hit the floor, how catlike his movements as he dropped through the little trap door, landing almost silently.  His shirt pulled up before he dropped and Chris saw the boy’s stomach was no longer sunken in and emaciated.  He’d been with them for a week and already he seemed like a different person from the gaunt, snarling, dangerous wraith he’d found in the abandoned apartments.  But he still didn’t want to be touched, still couldn’t hold eye contact for long without looking away, his pale face going red, his hands clenching, fingers nervously rubbing together like a cricket.

 

In the morning, Tom had watched Chris as he moved around the room getting ready for school, his eyes noticing everything, his heart kicking him painfully in the memories.  He remembered the way a normal person living a normal life moved, the way Chris moved - the easy, carefree way he seemed to just exist, without tense muscles ready to bolt at any time, without nervous eyes constantly casting about, mapping exits, reading peoples’ intentions.  His eyes weren’t even completely open, and he yawned in a sort of master of the universe sort of way that Tom envied.  He was like a lion that had no natural enemies, and no reason to feel threatened.

_It must be a good feeling._

He remembered it, and he remembered the precise moment when it had ended for him.  After his father left, the one person he always knew would love him and his sister, take care of them the way helpless little kids should be taken care of. After his father left, taking that love and safety and assuredness with him, and his stepdad happened.

The first time his stepdad hit him wasn’t the moment.  The moment was the first time he hit Emma.

Chris didn’t look like he’d ever been hit, with the probable exception of a few schoolyard fights.  He was big and burly and he just _looked_ strong.  Like someone you didn’t mess with.

He looked down at his own hands, attached to long thin arms, bony wrists.  He knew he looked like a twig that would snap if you bent it even a little.  But he also knew how strong he was, he’d had to prove it too many times not to know what he was capable of.  He’d held his own against a grown man intent on beating him to death as a nine year old boy.  Through a long line of foster homes he had defended himself against jealous foster siblings, mean kids in new school after new school as he was shuffled around the state, into and out of home after home where he was never really wanted and nobody knew how to deal with his anger…bigger kids, bigger adults, nobody had ever truly beaten him, not without a vicious fight, unless they knocked him unconscious.  Even that had happened a few times, but he always got back up swinging.  Blood in his eyes had only ever triggered his bloodlust.

As big as Chris was, he knew he could hold his own against him.

But what made him smile was the certainty, unfounded but somehow definite in his head, that he would never have to.

“What do you do while I’m at school, anyway?”  Chris glanced up at him, black grease smudged across his chin.  The shop was filthy, it was impossible to even walk through it without getting something on you.  Tom loved it, the smell of the dirty oil, the heavy dark smell of the engines mixed with the sweat of the mechanics, fixing broken things.  “You’re not hanging around my house, mom said you leave every morning.  She never knows if you’re coming back or not.” He reached over and punched him, only half hard, on the shoulder.  "Stop worrying my mom, bitch.“

Tom winced, not from the punch so much as the contact.  Chris and his mother both were prone to wanting to touch him, more than he was comfortable with. He knew it was the kindness in their natures, he watched them hug each other, goodnight kisses, things he wanted but couldn’t ask for because these weren’t his people.  He had no people.  Emma had been his one physical indulgence, climbing into her bed at night or allowing her to join him in his, holding each other, lifelines in a dark, tempestuous sea that neither of them was old enough to navigate alone.  But Emma was gone, and he was beginning to think he’d never find her.

"I go to the library.  Meredith got me a card.”  He pulled it out of his pocket - it was one of less than a handful of things he possessed, something with his name on it, and he was proud of it even though the last name she’d had them put on it was hers, not his.   _You’ll be a Hemberley until we know no one’s looking for you,_ she had said quietly.  He realized too late that his pride was obvious when Chris grinned, and he tucked it back into his pocket with an embarrassed flush to his cheeks.  Chris looked away, not wanting to make it worse.

_“I_ don’t even have a library card.  I guess you’re official now.”

“Official what?”

Chris shrugged, his eyes on the partly disassembled motorcycle in front of him. “Member of society?”

“Fuck.  Just what I always wanted.”

He laughed, reaching for the wrench next to Tom’s boot.  "What are you doing at the library?“

"Why do you want to know?”

“You’re here for a reason.  No kid goes that far from home by himself without there being a reason.”  He looked at him, squinting, a look that always said _I know I’m pissing you off and I’m enjoying it more than I should._ Tom ignored the look and kicked the wrench toward him.

“I’m using their computers and the public records search.”

“Searching for what?”

“My sister.”

“You have a sister?”

“Yes, I have a sister.”

Mild surprise registered on Chris’s face.  Why had he never considered the possibility that this kid could have siblings?  Maybe because he always seemed so alone, like he’d just appeared somewhere, half grown, without any parents, out of nowhere.  "Are you having any luck?“

"No…not yet.”  There was a note of despair in his voice, an almost despondent lack of hope, something that made Chris sad to the point of anger.   _Something needs to go right for this poor bastard._

“What’s her name?”

“Emma Heyworth.”

“No shit?  She’s a couple grades behind me.”

The despondent look vanished, his dark eyebrows shooting up in disbelief.  "She goes to your school?“

"Yeah.  We’re in the same lunch.”

_“You know my sister?”_

“No I don’t really _know_ her, I just know who she is.  Little short blonde girl, doesn’t talk a lot, right?”

“I need to find out where she lives.”

He nodded, carefully pretending not to notice how excited Tom was, hiding his own excitement as well - there was something, finally _something_ that he could do for him, but he didn’t want the kid to be too disappointed if it fell through.  He couldn’t handle being responsible for putting more grief on him.  "I can get that. The office secretary likes me.“

From the corner of his eye he could see Tom smiling, spinning a wrench between his fingers like he’d seen him do with the knife, that first day at the condemned apartments when he’d warned him off by hurling it at his head.

"Office secretary huh?  You’re just a whore, aren’t you?”

“Takes one to spot one.”

He waited to see if the boy was going to react to the crude insinuation, but he was obviously too excited with this new contingency to care.  But Chris didn’t need to see a reaction to know what he already suspected to be true.  He’d figured it out, piecing together the obvious -  the boy had a long, lanky beauty that had surely served a purpose, a handsome face with a soft, slightly androgynous sweetness to it, big soulful eyes and a charming smile that would easily make things possible that no fifteen year old kid would be able to do on their own.  All together these things did a good job of hiding the intense angry sadness in the back of his eyes, the taut, tightly stretched nervousness of the long, thin limbs.  He _did_ look older than fifteen…eighteen was believable, he could see how someone blinded by the beauty of him would be quick to accept this untruth without questioning it.  Someone who wanted to believe, someone whose needs could be met less reprehensibly by an eighteen year old adolescent than a fifteen year old boy.

He felt that confusing flush of heated rage again, not angry that strangers had found a use for him, but that someone had gotten to him at a very young age and put a despair into him that made him willing to use the only thing he had.

He reached out to touch his hair, felt his heart clutch up when he saw the flash of blue as the sunlight coming in through the big bay window hit Tom’s eyes - and this time he didn’t pull away.

 

 

_To be continued…_


	5. Pîkotehewin

 

 

##  **_P[îkotehewin](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.creedictionary.com%2Fsearch%2Findex.php%3Fq%3Dp%25C3%25AEkotehewin%26scope%3D1%26cwr%3D52062&t=YzE2YWIzNzZkMmQ2Y2NhNzFkZjFhZjAwMzc4YzRmYzk3ZTc0ZTQyYyxzUXBYcHRLcg%3D%3D) - Saskachewan Plains Cree - ᐲᑯᑌᐦᐁᐃᐧᐣ (noun):  heartbreak_ **

**_**********_ **

##  **_Mokita - A Kivila word that means “the truth we all know but agree not to speak of.”_ **

 

 

***************************************

 

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know, the last time I saw him was a few hours ago.”

“Oh god.   _Find him Chris.”_

The panic in her voice made him move quickly.  Something wasn’t right.  His eyes raced around the room, searching for what felt out of place…it took a minute, but he finally found it.

The closet door.

It was closed.

He put his back to the wall next to the hinges, sliding down to the floor to sit, a deep sigh rushing out of him.  Relief?  Worry?  Or just a heavy sense of _not looking forward to this…?_

He reached up and tapped his knuckles against the door.

“You okay in there?”

There was no sound from the other side, but he knew he was in there, curled up in the dark, face buried in his knees, those freakishly long legs pulled up in front of him.  Hiding from whatever it was that chased him all night.  What could be so bad that going into the closet was the preferred alternative?  He’d been panicked at the mere thought of that closet since the day he’d walked into their house. Something was so bad, so horrifying, that _this_ was now a safe place.

Another tap, another quiet inquisition.  Another lack of reply.  But he could hear a sound, like a low, snarling growl, a sound he’d never heard from another human being before.  A sound like an animal that had been chased and cornered and was refusing to give up without a fight, willing to either spill blood or have its own spilled rather than go peacefully.

 _“I’m here, brother,”_ he whispered, his head against the door frame, fingers sliding slowly down the wood as if the boy inside could feel the soothing touch. _“I’m here.”_

They waited for him to come out on his own, again.  It was all they could do, all they ever did when he got like this.  The one time they’d opened the door he had flown at Chris with such a sudden vicious ferocity that the bigger boy was knocked off his feet, the two of them rolling around punching and biting, the younger boy snarling and feral like a wild, beaten animal.  Meredith could only separate them with cold water, thrown on them from her safe place on top of the sofa.

Both boys were bloodied and bruised by the time the fight was finally out of Tom. His nose bleeding from an elbow to the face, Chris’s neck purple and abraded from a vicious bite, she had stared at the younger boy in shock but not horror, without judgement but with more than a little bit of motherly disapproval…and when he finally calmed and returned to his senses enough to raise his eyes and look at her, she saw no shame in them.  Just a will to survive.

_This boy will do anything it takes to make it._

Chris’s laughter drew both their attention.  He was rubbing his neck where Tom’s teeth had marked him with an angry reddening bruise.

“You’re a _mean_ fucker, aren’t you skinnyass.”

Tom had slowly lifted his head, raising his chin in what looked like a pale shadow of prideful defiance, before a slow grin came to his lips as he licked them.

_“And you’re not as tough as you look, mummy’s boy.”_

 

Emma had been fostered into the home of a boy in Chris’s grade.  "I don’t like him, he’s an asshole,“ he muttered as he handed Tom the address, scribbled on a torn and crumpled bit of paper.  "But I think he’s harmless, it’s his dad that’s the real dick.”

Tom nodded, staring at the paper.  He knew about the dad.  He’d come all this way to kill him.

“I might need your backup on this,” he said, so quiet that Chris almost didn’t hear him over the wind rustling the trees.  The boy’s voice was often like that - quieter than your own breath, so that just the act of being alive was too loud for him to be heard over.  But Chris had begun knowing how to hear him without the words.  A lot was said between them in absolute silence.

He nodded.

“I know a guy with a car that’ll take us over there.”  He gave Tom a sideways look, not sure if he should ask.  "Do I want to know what you’re planning on doing?“

"I need to get her out of there.”

“You have a plan?”

“Go in, get her out.”

“That’s not a plan, that’s Eric’s dad tossing your skinny ass out in the front yard.”

“That’s why I have you, isn’t it.”

Chris nodded, one corner of his mouth pulling up in the slightest of smiles. _I have you._  It was the closest indication the boy had ever given of caring anything about him.

“Yeah, I guess that’s why.”

 

When the shouting in the kitchen began, Chris tried to block Eric from leaving the livingroom, but in the end all he could do was follow him into hell.  As the door swung shut behind him and the sound of Emma’s screaming set his ears to ringing, the only part of the mayhem that his brain could comprehend was the blood - he’d heard glass, but it took him a second to realize the big empty space in front of him had been a bay window, and that neither of the two bodies on the ground outside were moving.

_“Fuck.”_

Tom was laying on his back, frighteningly _sickeningly_ motionless, his face as pale as the first time he’d seen him, the top half of his body propped up on the likewise unmoving body of Eric’s dad.  Broken glass littered the ground around them and was sprayed across their faces, equal amounts glass and blood and dirt from where they’d hit the ground.  There was something final in the way the dad was laying, like the blood pooling around his head was taking his life with it, sucking it out of him and soaking it into the earth without any argument from him. His hands were still wrapped around Tom’s neck.

But what unnerved him the most was the blood that wasn’t coming from _him._ Tom was covered with it, a deep red puddle seeping from a jagged gash in his side, just over his hipbone, gathering in the hollow of his bellybutton.  But it was pulsing blood, which meant a beating heart was pushing it out.

He took the knife from Emma’s hand, wiped the blood off it, not thinking about whose it was.  The cold, unemotional side of his brain had taken over and all he could think of was _fix this.  Fix it before the cops come._  He turned to Eric, his face a mask of rage to hide his fear.

“Your fucking drunk dad fell out the goddamn window!”

Eric dragged his eyes away from the horrifying scene, staring in confusion at him.  "What?“

"Look what he did, man!  He killed my friend!”  He shoved him, desperate to get his emotions riled, to confuse him more so that he wouldn’t piece together what had actually happened.  He gave him a hard push on the chest with both hands, knocking him backwards.  "Call the damn cops, idiot!  Get an ambulance!“

The next moments were a panicked maelstrom of noise and confusion as the mom rushed into the kitchen, screaming when she saw her husband.  Emma was standing, frozen where she stood, her eyes locked to her brother, her hands clamped over her mouth.  She had finally stopped screaming herself, but Chris couldn’t be bothered with checking to see if she was alright.  He pushed Eric again, shouting at him one more time to call the police, then stepped over the sill of the shattered bay window and knelt beside the still unmoving boy, hurriedly moving the long black hair off his face.

The blue eyes opened, focused on him, then looked past him.

"Emma?”

“She’s okay man, it’s cool.  I think she accidentally stabbed you.”

“Glass - ”

“Yeah, you went through the window.”

“No…put glass in it.”

Chris didn’t understand for a moment, not until he looked down and saw Tom clutching at the gash in his side.  The police would have questions, a lot of them. One of them was likely to be why he was laying there with a stab wound on top of a dead guy.

Grimacing, Chris picked up a thick shard of glass and pushed it into the wound.

Tom never made a sound.

 

The questions, in the end, never turned accusing.  Mr Lensher was drunk, undeniably.  His wife confirmed both his inebriation and his unreasoning anger; the son confirmed, accidentally in his own confusion, that the drunken rages were common.

Emma was taken, unresponsive and unspeaking, her version of the story locked somewhere inside her head where she and her brother were both safe from it. The look that haunted Tom’s face was pure, helpless anguish as the car left with her, in the back seat wrapped in a blanket, her eyes already somewhere far away.  He had come so far to find her…and in the end she had looked through him as if he wasn’t there.  But she was away from that man.

_Whatever it takes._

The police were sympathetic to the boys.  Victims in an adult’s drunken rage, not completely an accurate description but close enough.  It suited their purposes, so they didn’t dispute it.

 _He came at me and we fell._  The pressure marks on the boy’s neck corroborated his story. A few stitches would repair his hip where broken glass from the window had cut him.  It was as good a story as any…far less incriminating than the story the knife had to tell. Tucked away in the back of Chris’s jeans, it never got its chance to confess to stabbing Tom, to tell how the girl had grabbed it from the counter and thrown herself at the man with the intent of driving it into his gut, how the boy had turned between them to stop her as the man’s hands choked him.  He had been pushed back against him and they both fell, the combined weight of their bodies carrying them through the window, the jagged glass finally doing the job the girl had set out to do.

If the girl had been able to speak, she would have told how she and her brother had plotted to kill this man, this monster that touched her while she slept, of how her brother had told her to wait till he got there, that he would do it for her.  How her mind had snapped when the man who touched her was suddenly touching _him,_ his hands gripping her brother’s throat, strangling the life out of him in front of her.

She and the knife both had far more interesting stories to tell.

But neither of them were ever told.

 

Two days later Chris threw the knife in the bay, silencing it forever.  As the blade hit the water, Emma sat staring out a window far away, just as silent.

 

“That’s gonna be a cool scar.”

Tom slid his hand down his side, shaky fingers touching the jagged tear in his skin.  The stitches itched and he kept pulling at them, wanting them gone.  He hadn’t spoken much since that night, but Chris kept talking anyway, leaving spaces for him to speak if he wanted to, waiting patiently till he was ready to hear his own voice again.

He told his mother he was sick and was going to stay home from school.  She didn’t argue, only touched his face, smoothed his hair. _Take care of him_  her eyes said.  She had stitched the wound herself, seen how carefully Chris held the boy’s shoulders to keep him still while she tended to his injuries.  She’d long since figured out that he was a runaway and hospital emergency rooms required too much paperwork, so she and Chris had patched him up in their kitchen, keeping him well away from authorities who would be curious about who he was and where he should be.  The police at the scene had been told he was a Hemberley, and in the midst of the drama no one had questioned why one brother was blonde as the sun while the other was black as the night.

It was the least they could do for him, claiming him as their own.  Somewhere in her heart she knew he deserved saving, if for no other reason than the fact that he was a once innocent child.  Maybe a bit rough around the edges, a little wrecked but not ruined.

 _Everyone deserves a second chance,_ she told her son. _We’re his._

Once she was gone, shutting the door quietly behind her, Chris took his shoes off and climbed back onto the bed, scooting up close behind Tom but not touching him.

 _“Be still,”_ he scolded when the boy tried to move away, and for some reason, the boy obeyed.

 

***************************************

**First Spring**

*****************************************

 

The nightmares came fast, when they came.  Too fast to do anything more than deal with the brutal aftermath.  He was like a junkie in withdrawal, suddenly attacked by the night terrors of an addiction that was never an addiction - now that the waking nightmare of his life had ended, the sleeping one began, refusing to let him step away from what his reality had been, even for just a few hours of sleep.

There was no more _this is my side, that’s your side._  At first he slowly migrated to Chris’s side, not touching him, just inching closer until he could feel his breath on his cold skin.  For many nights he carefully maintained that final few inches between them, guarding it, making sure it never disappeared.  The closer he was to him, the less the nightmares hounded him, as if the bigger boy was a protective wall between him and the things he feared.

 _“It’s okay,”_ he heard a voice in the darkness say.  A hand touched his, just briefly, softly, then moved away, back across the little barrier of those final few inches between them, a hesitant ghost of a touch that made him shiver.

He reached across to touch the hand after it was withdrawn, fingers nervously drifting across thick knuckles, his own hand shaking at the contact.  He wasn’t used to touching or being touched, not without consequences.  He closed his eyes, waiting to see what would happen.

The big hand closed around his, holding it tight against his chest.  Tom could feel Chris’s heartbeat against his fingers.

_Well that wasn’t bad._

When he woke later in the night, sweating cold and gasping for breath, the big hand was still holding his, the heartbeat still strong and steady under it.

 

 

_To be continued…_


	6. Kîsonew

 

 

##  _**[kîsonew](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.creedictionary.com%2Fsearch%2Findex.php%3Fq%3Dk%25C3%25AEsonew%26scope%3D1%26cwr%3D65808&t=ZTEzYjlhM2ZlMjA3NDkyNzFkZDNkZjVmMzM4NDI1Yzc2OGZlZDJhZSxadURFeFF3Vg%3D%3D) - Saskachewan Plains Cree - ᑮᓱᓀᐤ (verb): s/he holds her/him to get her/him warm** _

**Trouvaille (n.)  
** Origin: French  
Something lovely discovered by chance  


*************************************

For every step forward, every bit of progress they made with him, there were two, sometimes three steps back.  It was as if each time a little bit of ground was gained, a small victory celebrated, something arbitrary in the boy insisted that something be lost and the fight to regain it be twice as difficult.

 _Give him time,_ Meredith told Chris when his temper flared.   _He needs patience. He’s afraid._

_Afraid of what?  He knows he’s safe here._

_That’s what he’s afraid of.  He doesn’t know **how** to be safe…it’s abnormal to him.  All he knows is danger, his nerves aren’t tuned for calm._  


He wasn’t told where his sister had been taken, but Chris used whatever means necessary to get information out of Eric after school.  She’d been put into another foster home, one that specialized in special needs cases, but that was all he knew.  The lack of details was a blessing.  She had begun harming herself, becoming quickly uncontrollable until she was committed to a mental care facility for her own protection.  But all Tom knew was that he’d lost her again.  The sadness and overwhelming sense of failure made him surly and mean, and he took it out on the one person he knew could handle it.

Insults and curses turned to violence and rather than use his superior strength, Chris chose instead to simply prove it existed.  After a particularly nasty round of _fuck you’s,_ he grabbed Tom and tripped him, slamming him to the floor to sit on him.

_“Get off me!”_

“Shut up.  You’re being an asshole.”

_“GET OFF ME!”_

“Not till you learn whose house this is.”

The snarl that came from his throat was more animal than human.  His eyes locked to Chris’s and there was a moment where the struggle stopped before he hissed, “It’s _mine.”_

Chris laughed a little, grabbing Tom’s wrists to pin his arms over his head. “That’s right.  It’s yours.  You live here just like I do, which means you gotta start acting like you belong.  You understand?”

“Get off you fucking neanderthal!”  He brought a knee up and drove it into Chris’s back, knocking him off balance before he scrambled to his feet and backed away, grabbing a lamp as he put distance between them, yanking its plug out of the wall and hefting it over his head.  It never failed to amaze and amuse the older boy, how easily this skinny kid could make anything within reach into a functioning weapon.

Chris just shook his head, his temper ready to boil.  "Boy don’t make me throw you a beating.“

“Fuck you, don’t touch me.”

“Oh so we’re back to that again?”

There was so much raw anger in Tom’s eyes that Chris hesitated for a moment - _just_ a moment - before he tackled him to the floor again.  Three years of high school football practice paid off in those few seconds that it took him to overpower the younger boy, but he failed to take into account just how strong Tom could be when he felt threatened.  Just as quickly as he had put him on the ground, Tom put him on his back.

It was in that moment that Chris’s hand came up and grasped the side of Tom’s neck.  Strangely, inexplicably, there was no aggression in the gesture;  without thinking, he slid his thumb up to stroke the side of the boy’s face, a face that was now looking down at him with confusion sparking in the bright turquoise eyes. He waited for him to pull away, to get up off him and either kick him in the ribs or storm out of the house snarling his standard warning of  _Don’t touch me._  But he didn’t.  He stayed still, closing his eyes, and in that brief moment Chris felt him push his face against his palm.

The intimacy of the touch was almost unbearable.  It sparked a heat in the boy’s stomach that burned him, setting his nerves aflame with something that ached, indefinably, pushing up words that tumbled out of his throat before he could stop them.

_“I need…I want…”_

He didn’t know what he needed or wanted, only that he needed and wanted it  _now._  It shocked and somewhat horrified him to realize he’d spoken the words out loud.  But the next words weren’t his, and they shocked him even worse.

“Kiss me first.”

Tom’s eyes fluttered open and the reality of the situation struck him; he was half laying against Chris’s broad chest, his face tilted up, his lips barely touching the scratchy underside of his stubbled chin.

“What?”

“You heard me.  Kiss me.”

“Why?”

“That’s what people do, isn’t it?”

“It’s what men and women do.”

“No, it’s what people who love each other do.”

He shook his head, keeping his eyes off Chris’s face.  Anywhere but those sparkling grey blue eyes.  Without speaking, he sat up on the bigger boy’s hips, closing his own eyes tight, thinking about his next response. He knew he was expected to reciprocate to kindness.  Kindness was currency, you gave it to get something in return.  The road had taught him that, and it was a lesson he’d turned into a skill.  He knew how to do one thing really well, and moved down the other boy’s body to do it, shutting his mind down, sending it somewhere else to protect it.

“I didn’t say suck my cock you dingbat, I said kiss me.  I know you know the difference.”

Tom looked up from where he was crouched over Chris’s stomach, frozen in place, unsure what he was supposed to do.  When a man touched him _that_ way, with tenderness, it always meant one thing…didn’t it?  His brow furrowed with confusion and Chris laughed, reaching down to grab a handful of his hair.

“Get back up here.”

He did as he was told - not because he feared Chris, or his size and obvious strength.   _Because he wanted to._  There was a strong, dominant _thing_ inside him, he felt it, he knew it was there…but it wasn’t for Chris.  For Chris there was something else, something softer, more pliant, obedient.  Submissive.

Hovering over his chest, he looked down into those brilliant silvery eyes and closed his own.

“No.  Look at me.  If you’re gonna do it you look at me while you do.”

Tom shook his head, but opened his eyes as he was told.

“You…you love me?”

“Of course I do, numbnuts.”

“But why?”

“Do I have to have a reason?”

“Yes.”

“Is that what you think?  That people have to have a reason to love each other? That it doesn’t just happen for no reason at all sometimes?”

“But…I’m not…”

“I’m not either.”

“But - ”

“For you, though.”  He pushed a big hand through the long messy hair, turning the boy’s face up to his.  "I am for you.“

 

Tom laid back on the bed, his hands gripping Chris’s forearms tightly.  His eyes looked dead as he closed them, head dropping back onto the pillow.

“No,” Chris whispered, burying his face in the silky black hair splayed across the white pillowcase, soot spilled on snow.  "You open your eyes and look at me.“

Tom was shaking his head, eyes still closed tight.

_No._

Chris bent his head, taking his lips gently, softly against his own.  Against them, through the kiss, the boy spoke so quietly, with so much anguish, that he heard it more with his heart than his ears.

_“I need…”_

A pause as both boys held the kiss, the words ghosting in the midst of it, almost lost inside their breathing.

_“…touch me - ”_

After so many nights of _don’t_ …Chris laid a hand reverently on Tom’s cheek, thumb brushing gently across the sharp bone, begging him silently to open his eyes.

And when he did, the blue was so blue, so alive, it ripped at the older boy’s heart, biting with sharp teeth that tore so deep he couldn’t even draw breath to scream.

“You know how to do this?”

Tom nodded, unflinching.  "This way,“ he said decisively, bringing his knees up just slightly to bump Chris’s hips.   _Don’t put me on my face…please…I want to see your eyes, I want to see if you feel shame when you do this._

Chris’s mouth found his again, tasting his lips, the moan that slipped from his throat tickling as their teeth bumped together.  Tom was lifting his hips, giving him access.  He put his hand on the boy’s flat belly and pushed him back down. “No…don’t rush me.  I’ve never done this.  I don’t want to hurt you…just let me figure out what I’m doing.”

Tom nodded, his eyes wide and wet.

 _He looks like a little kid.  He’s a fucking ancient old man stuck in this body behind those giant soulful eyes and he’s offering me himself because it’s all he’s got._  

His need for affection, for a loving touch, was so deep, so blindingly harsh that he only knew one way to get it, to be touched _hard_ enough, _deep_ enough, that his soul would recognize it.  All the beatings, the unloving touches, had dulled his ability to feel, to acknowledge anything as touch, because touch was meant to be _good,_ to be fulfilling and safe, but touch for him was just hurtful.  It left him bruised and his sister crying.  He was numb from it.  

But Chris’s hands on him.. _.he felt it._  It was soothing and warm and safe.   _It didn’t hurt._ He wanted more of it but it wasn’t fair to ask it of him.  It wasn’t his to ask for.  He would simply take what Chris was willing to give and find a way to be satisfied with it.  It would be good enough.  Better than what he’d had.

They kissed until they tasted blood, and then one of them reached over to turn off the lamp.

As Chris pushed into him and heard Tom’s voice catch in his throat, he was aware of two things - a blinding white light of painful pleasure, and the words _It’s alright, it’s alright_  whispering fleetingly between them.

It was to his great surprise that he realized the words were coming from Tom’s mouth, not his.

 

Somewhere in the small hours of the early morning, while their hands were still touching and exploring, their mouths still tasting, their breath still catching and holding and sighing, Tom let slip a laugh that took them both off guard.  He didn’t know where it came from or why it happened.

_Was he happy?_

He wasn’t sure…he remembered happy, but it was a distant recollection.  Chris shot him a look, but it was more teasing than scolding.  "Dude, I swear to god if you wake my mom up.“

The smile that crept across Tom’s face in the half light was both seductive and unguarded, exposing the deepest part of what he felt in that moment.  He leaned forward to bite the muscular shoulder attached to the arm that was around his waist.  

"Mummy’s boy.”

 

_To be continued…_


	7. Sâkihitowin

 

**Saskachewan Plains Cree:[sâkihitowin](http://www.creedictionary.com/search/index.php?q=s%C3%A2kihitowin&scope=1&cwr=33881)  ᓵᑭᐦᐃᑐᐃᐧᐣ  Noun:  love; mutual love; affection**

 

 **Yūgen (n.)**  
**_Origin: Japan  
_ An awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and mysterious for words**

 ******************************************

  
_**First Summer**_

***************

 

The two boys lay in the grass, the sunlight on their faces. Tom passed a lit cigarette lazily to Chris, his dark sunglasses hiding his eyes from the bright sun. He moved his head, turning where he lay propped up on the older boy's thigh, his gaze following two girls passing the vendor wagons who had noticed them. Chris grinned, waving.

Summer had brought with it a new sort of peace, one that the younger boy liked, but couldn't get used to. He was sixteen now; he'd grown another couple of inches, looking eighteen suddenly far more believably.  His lanky handsomeness had the effect of pulling everyone's eyes toward him, his extreme height and long jet black hair combining to create a striking attractiveness that women were drawn to.  He wasn't sure how to take this new attention and mostly ignored or remained oblivious to it, but just as strangers' eyes were drawn to him, he suddenly found his own eyes drawn to girls more and more.

The new season had seen a change in Chris as well, a maturing into a burly masculine sort of manhood that played opposite of the delicate beauty of the darker boy.  Nearly as tall as Tom but blonde and broad jawed, with a thick, heavily muscled frame, he drew as much attention as the friend who had become his constant companion.  Meredith teased them about being her twins, not quite opposite sides of the same coin, but more the equivalent of two different coins glued together.  She smoothed Tom's hair, her heart warming when she felt him push his head against her hand, like a puppy that finally trusts you enough to crave your petting.  
  
"Have fun and please don't get into any trouble," she pleaded, pushing some money into his pocket before turning to Chris. "And _you_ get a haircut."

"Me? What about Sitting Bullshit over there? His hair is down to his ass."

A smack on the back of the head was all the answer he got.

"She likes you better than me now," the older boy grumbled on their way out of the house.  Tom's heart froze up, a gutting sensation of panic stopping him where he stood - he'd always feared Meredith's favor would make Chris hate him.  He couldn't lose the only friend he had, the only person in the world besides Meredith who cared anything about him.  His eyes went fearfully to Chris's face to find him shaking his head with a bemused grin;  quickly noticing the look the bigger boy grabbed a handful of Tom's hair, tugging it hard, yanking his head back.  But the roughness didn't anger him.  He closed his eyes and smiled, enjoying the feeling of being touched so deeply, so viscerally, that he actually felt euphoric.

 

They had climbed the fence and sneaked into the festival, settling on a little hill under some trees toward the back of the field, behind the crowd where they could lay in the grass and listen to the music without the bustle of people around them. Tom was returning a smile from one of the passing girls when Chris jiggled his leg under his head to get his attention.

"Hey Tommy. Go get her."

Tom turned to look at her again, catching her smile that was still there for him, noticing her long sleek legs, the way the hem of her little sundress blew lazily around them in the warm breeze.  It tugged at something in his gut and he shook his head, turning his face back up to the sun, eyes closing against the blinding heat of it.

"And what do I do with her once I've got her?"

Chris laughed, leaning back against the trunk of the tree. "I don't think you need me to explain it to you."

A broad smile crossed his face as he shook his head again.  But something made him look one more time, and when he did, she was still there, her smile for him still inviting.

 

He didn't know what chain of events led him to the unguarded sound equipment trailer, or how the girl's hand felt so soft and small in his as she led him up the steps after her, but he did know that fucking her against the back wall in the dark felt better on a purely physical level than just about anything he'd ever experienced.  When they went back to the tree on the slope, the girl's friend was napping against Chris's chest.

Tom lay down in the grass next to the blanket, letting the girl lay her head on his stomach as they shared a beer from the six-pack Chris had pilfered from somewhere.  Her name was Lisa.  It was close to Alicia...close enough that it brought a smile to his face, and he stroked her long blonde hair in the warm sunlight, feeling something curiously akin to happy.

 

When night grew dark and the girls had gone, the boys went down to the stage.  The music had grown increasingly wild as the evening progressed and they'd both been drinking all day, a warm buzz pulling their cares out of them so that all they felt was the music and the loud hum of the crowd around them.  Chris kept a close eye on Tom, making sure no one got too close, but the crowd didn't seem to bother him.

He noticed two particularly rough looking men had been watching for a while.  A fierce protective instinct took over and he moved closer, his hand going to Tom's shoulder, squeezing possessively.  When that didn't stop them he moved up behind him, standing close enough for his chest to bump into his back, and slipped his arms around him.

Tom leaned back against him, and the warmth Chris felt rush into his face had nothing to do with the summer heat.

Without thinking much beyond getting unwelcome eyes off his friend _,_ he turned Tom around and pulled him into an embrace, sliding a leg between his as he nudged their mouths together, his eyes shooting a silent dare over the boy's shoulder to the men watching.  Tom let him kiss him, returning it, the music and the heat and the beer all mixing and mingling with the salty taste of his best friend's lips, and he didn't even care why as his tongue slipped into his mouth.  Nobody gave them a second look, they melded together so seamlessly, so carelessly, so perfectly.   _Two different coins glued together._

The two men wandered off, Chris's fiery eyes watching them as they went, ensuring they were gone before he released his grip.

"Two bull queers been watching you," he said quietly next to Tom's ear. He let his soft hair tickle his lips before he pulled his head away to smile at him. "They think you're mine now."

Tom smiled back, half drunk, more than half contented and almost completely happy. "I _am_ yours."

Chris returned the smile, pushing his hand into the long black hair, shining almost blue in the bright overhead lights. "You bet your ass."

 

**********************************

 

"Are you fucking serious?"

"Shut up, it's my bed."

"Yes but I'm in it!"  Tom sat up in the dark and stared at Chris until his eyes adjusted.  "Didn't you get laid today?"

"Nope, that was you."

"Oh yeah."  He thought for a moment, remembering through his diminishing boozy haze his hookup in the sound trailer.  The pretty girl, the tiny lace panties under her short loose-fitting little sundress, the way her thighs had felt hugging his sides.  He smiled, a contented little grin that Chris could just barely see in the dark.  "Just don't shake the bed, okay?"

"It's my fucking bed, I'll shake it if I want to."

Yanking the blanket up to cover his ear, Tom huddled on his side with his back to him, trying to go to sleep.  He didn't move away when Chris spooned up against him from behind, didn't protest when he rubbed against him.  The sudden warm damp sensation of the older boy's come on the small of his back was a comforting thing, and he reached behind him to find his hand, lacing their fingers together.

 

 

_To be continued..._

 

 


	8. Sakihaw

 

_**Saskachewan Plains Cree:[sakihaw](http://www.creedictionary.com/search/index.php?q=sakihaw&scope=1&cwr=18922) :  ᓴᑭᐦᐊᐤ : He is loved. He is kept ** _

 

 

"Why does your mouth move like that?"

"Like what?"

Chris tapped the side of his own mouth, indicating the corner of his lower lip.  "Sorta droops, on the left side when you talk."

Tom rubbed his forehead, where a long deep vertical scar, old and almost invisible now except for the indentation that it left, marked his otherwise flawless face.

"My stepdad.  I tried to kill him, took a knife to him in his sleep.  Fucker woke up and beat my ass."  He smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile, not in the least bit sincere...the kind of smile a boy gets when telling the tale of a schoolyard defeat that he's only a little bit ashamed of.  "This is where he slammed my head into the corner of a table, split me to my skullbone."  He shrugged, dismissing the memory as something not out of the ordinary.  "My mouth has done that ever since."

"What, it gave you like a stroke or something?"

"Something, yeah, I guess.  Never really thought about it."

Chris stared at the scar for a moment.  He'd noticed it, but now that he looked at it more closely, he could see it went deep.  "Did your mom at least take you for stitches?"

A dismissive shake of the head, again as if it was nothing unusual.  Chris felt his anger flare, not as much against the stepdad for hurting him but toward his mom for not being a proper mother to him.  He couldn't stand seeing his friend act as if it was all normal, like these nightmarish episodes of violence and neglect were just how it was and nobody should be surprised to hear it.  He knew he would just shrug or mutter _whatever_   if he said another word about it, so he looked away to calm himself, away from that innocent face and that scar.

"I've seen how you are with knives, how the hell did you fail?"

Tom narrowed his eyes, looking at him like the answer should be obvious.

_"I was nine."_

 

School let out for the summer; Chris shifted to full time at the shop and left the house early in the mornings, often before sunup, but no matter how early he left Tom was always already up.  He would climb out onto the roof to sit with him for a while before he left.  The sky always seemed to hold more for Tom than it did for him and he would lay on his back beside him, staring up at the twinkling firefly stars in the blackened blue bed of the last bit of night, wondering exactly what it was that the two of them had to say to each other.

"I'm sorry about your stepdad," he finally said, quietly, feeling guilty about interrupting whatever Tom and the sky had going on.  He'd been thinking about the things he'd told him, the nightmarish revelations that barely merited more than a sullen shrug from the younger boy as he revealed the reality he called normal.  He'd often felt sorry for himself, growing up without a dad, but the last few months with this scarred, damaged runaway had made him rethink his self pity.  It felt shallow and silly now after he'd seen scars that resembled cigarette burns just a little too accurately to be anything else...angry red marks that were just now beginning to heal, their color fading under his mother's careful doctoring. _Those weren't my stepdad_ he'd told him. _The ones he gave me are already gone._  He'd pushed a sleeve up to show him the old marks, scarred now to pale shiny patches.  Chris had never asked him about the foster families that he'd been shuffled around to for the last few years but the new scars angered him and he couldn't stop himself thinking about this fierce skinny boy with the kind smile, taking it with unflinching rebellion burning in his eyes.

_They didn't know how to handle me._

_Then they should have left you alone._

A bitter laugh and a glint of something almost wicked in those enormous blue eyes.   _Naw...I wouldn't let them._

 

The last foster home had been a sergeant on a military base, a man who had raised three boys and promptly shipped them all off to military school to be the kind of man he was.  He was the last on the list, the dead end before the boy aged out of the system, too old to be cared for and too young not to be.  Tom's temper and attitude alternating with sullen silence and violent tendencies had driven the man to hand out harsh punishments - but he was already fifteen and knew where he needed to be, and it sure as hell wasn't on a military base in Michigan.  He'd been shoved into a closet after a particularly rough bout of shouting from both sides, the door locked and barricaded with a heavy sofa as the sergeant left for work, yelling through the door that he would come back at lunch to see if hunger and darkness improved his attitude any.  But when lunchtime came the boy was gone, the closet door kicked into shattered planks and the sofa pushed halfway out a window.

It was the last time anyone in Michigan who knew Tommy Heyworth ever laid eyes on him.

He wasn't a boy anymore, as he stuck his thumb out and climbed into the first truck that pulled over, keeping his eyes carefully away from the hard stare of the driver that told him to get in.  He was a wraith, a wandering spirit that had no home, just a body that didn't fit right and a sweet smile that helped it survive on the kindness of strangers until it found what it was looking for.

 

Meredith quickly became the mother his own mother had no right not to be, and Tom grew as protective of and devoted to her as Chris was.  She would come in tired after her second job and fall into bed fully dressed with the lights on, too exhausted to even take her jacket off, but she was never surprised when she heard the door open quietly followed by gentle hands on her ankles, taking her shoes off.

"How are you, Tom?"

The boy smiled happily as he crawled onto the bed next to her, curling into a ball at her side like an oversized puppy;  she was the only person who called him Tom, to everyone else he was Tommy.  He didn't care much either way, but something about the way she shortened his name made him feel like an adult and he loved her for it.

"Good," he said quietly, turning his face up to look at her, his eyes clouding over with concern when he saw how tired she looked.  "You're working yourself to death."  He closed them again as her fingers slid through his hair, comforting him.

"Somebody's got to feed you two bottomless pits."

He nuzzled up under her arm as she hummed to him, inhaling her scent, self soothing with the overactive sense of smell that had always enabled him to identify people by the way their skin smelled, to tell where they'd been by the various odors their hair and clothes picked up throughout the day or the scents left on them during contact with others.  He knew she'd been kissed by her boss or maybe just stood very close to him, a big burly man who reminded him enough of Chris to make him think that maybe he reminded her of her late husband.  He felt a little bit jealous.  But he knew she wasn't his to feel jealousy for.

"So what did I have for lunch today, Snoot?"  

His grin grew bigger - he loved this game they played, and her nickname for him always made him feel happy.  He'd rarely been called anything besides his own name unless it was an epithet along the lines of _skinny little motherfucker,_ so to be given a playful name that wasn't insulting made him feel warm inside.  He'd always been told his keen nose made him a freak, that his ability to sniff out who'd been smoking behind the gym or who was wearing their mom's underwear meant there was something wrong with him.  But Meredith's little game made him feel normal, like it was a talent instead of a flaw.  He knew she was tired and needed to sleep, but she would play this with him until she drifted off.  She always did.

"Potato soup from the diner by the pharmacy.  Somebody was smoking Marlboros near you, but not at your table.  The person at your table had on too much aftershave and when you walked back there was a car with a bad exhaust, your skirt held onto the fumes."

"Nice.  What kind of aftershave was it?"

"Aramis."  He scrunched his nose up, laughing softly.  "You should buy him something different for christmas this year."

"I bought him the Aramis last year!"  She laughed, hugging him tight, listening to his rattly breathing.  He was better, but still far from well, and it stabbed at her heart that he suffered constantly.  "So what did you do today sweetheart?"  Her fingers were still combing gently through his hair, telling him without words that he was safe and cared for and wanted, and even though he was sixteen now and bigger than most full grown men, he still wanted to curl up in her arms and let her rock him to sleep as if he were a little boy.

"I worked at the shop with Chris for a while, till the boss came back."

"Did he pay you?"

"Yeah, he said he'll give me a real job next summer when I'm old enough.  I put the money in your drawer."

"No, baby, that's yours.  Buy yourself some new shoes, those boots have about had it."

"I like those boots."

"They make you look like a punk biker pirate."

"That's my look."

She laughed again, tugging his hair a little.  She knew he liked it - any touch, even less than gentle, seemed to settle his nerves, which was the opposite of how he'd been when he had first come to them.  Back then, nobody could touch him...his reactions were so unpredictable, he was just as likely to jerk away from you and hiss a threatening curse as he was to grab you around the throat and tackle you to the ground. But she and Chris had slowly tamed him down till now he moved toward touch instead of away from it.  They'd shown him it wasn't something to be dreaded and feared anymore.

She knew the boys had grown close.  She sometimes tiptoed quietly down the hall to silently push their door open and peek inside, like a new mother unable to make it through the night without sneaking a peek into the nursery at her babies.  She often saw them wrapped up in each other's arms or sleeping up against one another, Tom's long lanky body spooned back against Chris's big burly frame, and she would close the door just as quietly as she'd opened it, returning to her bedroom with the satisfied knowledge that they'd saved that boy.  Whatever direction their friendship took didn't matter.

It only mattered that he knew he was loved.

"So, what kind of car was it?"

"Hmm?"

"The car with the bad exhaust...what kind was it?"  She tugged a long strand of his hair playfully.  "Come on, don't disappoint me now Snoot."

Tom laughed and Meredith hugged him tighter, always amazed at how sweet his laugh was, how it sounded so undamaged and innocent.  It usually triggered a coughing fit, but this time he just nuzzled his face into the side of her neck and settled again, his breath warm on her skin.  "Dodge Charger."

"Really?"

"I dunno.  But that's the kind I'm going to get."

"They're expensive aren't they?"

"Yeah...but I can wear my punk pirate biker boots a few more years."

She pressed a kiss to his forehead, against the scar that looked as if it had split his head in two.  He used to flinch when she touched it.

"You do that, baby.  If you see something you want, you go and get it, no matter how long it takes."  Smoothing his hair back, she noticed how tightly he was holding her, but there was nothing in her that wanted to pull away.  "And remember that sometimes the best things take the longest to get."

She felt him nod his head against her shoulder and knew, more surely than she knew anything else, more surely than she had _ever_ known anything, that this boy was going to be okay.

 

_To be continued..._

 

 

 


	9. Ka Peyakot Mahihkan

                

 

 

 

_**[ka peyakot mahihkan](http://www.creedictionary.com/search/index.php?q=ka%20peyakot%20mahihkan&scope=1&cwr=54714)  ᑲ  ᐯᔭᑯᐟ  ᒪᐦᐃᐦᑲᐣ NA - Saskachewan Plains Cree -  lone wolf** _

_**[powâkan](http://www.creedictionary.com/search/index.php?q=pow%C3%A2kan&scope=1&cwr=62091)  ᐳᐋᐧᑲᐣ NA - Saskachewan Plains Cree - a guardian spirit** _

 

**_Yūgen (n.)_ **  
**_Origin: Japan_ **  
**_An awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and mysterious for words_ **

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

**Summer's End**

 

 

 

"I'm going to Canada.  You coming?"

Chris stopped cranking a bolt and looked up, staring at Tom through the engine casing of the old Harley between them.  He knew that look, that determination and made up mind.  There was no point in asking why.

"Yeah sure.  When we leaving?"

"As soon as you get one of these running enough to get us there."

He walked off, as if enough information had been exchanged for it to be a done deal.  Chris shrugged and went back to work, just one question going through his head:  which bike would be missed the least when they sneaked in and stole it during the night.

 

 

It was the end of summer, when long hot days begin shortening into cool nights and the air changes from arid to just slightly wet.  The boys rode from sunup till almost dark, stopping to switch drivers and eat, napping against each other's backs, lulled to sleep by the harsh rumble of the Harley they'd borrowed from the shop.  Chris had no idea where they were going, but he followed where Tom led, never bothering to glance over his shoulder at the map that he pulled out of his pocket from time to time.  He seemed to know where he was going, and that was good enough for him.

 

 

"I love this song."

Chris listened for a moment.  He could barely hear the tune through the earbuds tucked into Tom's ears, but once he'd stilled his breathing it became recognizable.  "Layla?"

"Yeah."  The boy smiled, almost euphorically as he laid his head back against the motorcycle's rear fender.  "Great melody."

He nodded.  The sun had just sunk below the horizon and a blue-black darkness had enveloped them;  the little campfire blazing into lazy life between them sent a pinkish orange glow around the clearing, like a tiny universe tucked safely into a bubble, holding the night just far enough back that they could see each other's faces and nothing beyond.  He watched Tom for a long time, feeling a warmth somewhere around his heart at the serene smile on the younger boy's lips as he lost himself in the music streaming from the iPod on his chest.  After a little while he crawled over next to him and stretched out on his back, a lumpy backpack under his head for a pillow, dozing off to the sounds of crickets in the dark and the barely audible strains of Clapton's guitar.

Sometime during the long cold night he woke and saw Tom sitting on the other side of the fire, bare chested, staring into the flames.  He'd marked his face with ashes from the fire, blacking around his eyes so that he looked more like a wraith than a teenage boy.  It unnerved him a little and he sat up, looking around, checking to see if everything was alright.

Tom just stared into the fire for a while longer, then slowly raised his eyes to look at him.

"Go back to sleep."

It was then that Chris realized skinny little Tommy didn't sound like a kid anymore.  He'd always had a deep baritone edge to his voice, deeper than his age would dictate, but there was something disconcertingly different about it now.  Something not quite right. _He sounded like a man._  With his eyes blacked, his face unnervingly skull-like, Chris imagined in his half asleep mind that grown up Tom had come during the night and killed kid-Tommy, and he'd caught him in the process of taking over his body.

_Is this how people grow up?_

He blinked hard, but didn't want to look at him anymore...morning would be here soon, and as he settled back down on the uncomfortable cold ground, he hoped somewhere in the back of his head that the Tommy he knew would still be there when the sun came up.

 

 

"Get up, we're nearly there."

Chris startled from his sleep, rubbing lazily at his eyes till a sudden memory of the night before came back to him and he jumped up, staring at Tom nervously.  He still looked like Tommy, moving around the little camp, putting out the fire.  The ash was gone from his face and his hair was wet, obviously having bathed in the creek at the bottom of the hill.  He gave Chris a questioning look as he brushed past him to fold their blanket and shove it into the backpack.

"I had a weird dream last night."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah.  You were...I dunno.  Older, I guess."  He felt confused now, not sure what he'd really seen, if he had actually seen anything at all.  He shook his head and knelt to check something on the bike's motor, dismissing the unsettling memory of Tom's face across the fire, of his blackened eyes and that oddly changed voice.  "So we're almost there?"

"Almost."  Tom's eyes followed him, watching as he fiddled with the motorcycle for a minute before unwinding a length of leather cord from around his wrist, using it to tie his long hair back into a ponytail.  "So I get older, huh?"

"Yeah."

"How much older?"

Chris swallowed hard - the fleeting memory made him uneasy, but he tried to remember the details.  Tommy had looked like a grown man, though he couldn't for the life of him put an age to what he'd seen.  "I dunno...just _older._  Grown up."

The boy shrugged shoulders that seemed suddenly, inexplicably broader, then tucked his hair into the collar of his jacket.  "Good to know I survive a while longer at least."

 

 

Chris wasn't sure if they should be driving across Indian land, but Tom knew where they were going and didn't stop until they'd arrived, at a house on the outskirts of the reservation.  They climbed off the bike and stood for a long moment, just looking around;  he had no idea what they were there for, but there was no apprehension on Tom's face as he headed for the house.  Chris felt nervous about following him, but it was nothing compared to how nervous the idea of staying behind made him.  "Do you know this place?"

"I do.  I dunno how, but I know it."  Tom looked off toward the mountains, closing his eyes against the cold breeze that came down off the snow capped peaks.  "I've been here."

"When?"

"No idea.  But this old man's name is Creek and his wife makes rock candy."

 

 

The elderly man took one look at Tom and broke into a wide smile.  He'd opened the door before they even got to the porch, most likely alerted by the loud rumble of the motorcycle as it entered the property, but the look on his face seemed to make the claim that he'd been expecting them.

"You finally made it."

Tom looked at him, nodding, seeming a little bit confused despite an air of complete familiarity with this strange place.  He didn't appear at all surprised that the man recognized him.  "Yeah.  I've known for a long time that I was supposed to come here.  Not really sure why though." 

"You're Heyworth's boy."  The man reached a hand out, letting it hover just over his shoulder;  Tom didn't move for a few seconds, then took a step forward, accepting the touch.

"Yes sir."

"Son, your granddaddy led this tribe.  There's not a lot left of it...so few of us are still here."  There was a narrowing of wizened old eyes as he fixed his stare firmly on the familiar, albeit younger, face before him.  Adam Heyworth's boy - that face was unmistakable, even though the eyes were very different.  The eyes were blue, like the turquoise stones in the old silver jewelry his wife wore.  "But every last one of us knows who you are."

Tom laughed, looking down at his boots for a long time before finally raising his face to the old man again.  "Then you all know more than I do.  I don't have a clue who I am."

The slow nod that came in response said it all, that the boy's words were exactly what he'd expected to hear.  He urged him into the house, waving to Chris to come in too.  "Come inside,  _ka peyakot mahihkan."_

The tall black haired boy obeyed, stepping inside, the big blonde boy following close behind him, smiling politely as the old man clasped his shoulder.  "Bless you,  _powâkan,"_   he said without explanation.  He quickly shuffled off to another room and Chris looked at Tom, a question hanging in his face as his friend peered around, his relaxed demeanor seeming to say that he'd been in this house before.

"It means guardian spirit," Tom said quietly, answering the unasked question.  "My dad taught me the language but I thought I'd forgotten it all.  It's been so long."  He gave Chris a smile, pointing toward the other room where the man had gone.  "He knows you got me here."

"So what's the other one mean?  What he called you?"

The man returned with something in his hand, motioning for the boys to sit.  "It means lone wolf.  His father called him  _mêmêkwêsiw mahihkan,_ his little wolf.  But you're not so little now, are you?"  He turned to Chris then, peering intently at him before bringing his knowing gaze back to Tom.  "And you're not so alone now, either."  Moving to sit down across from them, the man stared at their faces for a long while before he spoke again.  "My old woman is making us some lunch.  You boys look hungry, I bet it's been a long trip eh?"  Chris nodded, but Tom just stared back at him, confused by the rush of memories crowding his head.  There was a moment when no words were spoken but everyone seemed to understand each other.

"You have questions."

"Yeah, I do."

"Questions are meant to be asked, otherwise they eat away at our souls.  So ask."

Tom shook his head, not convinced his questions should ever find answers.  Maybe the truth was more than he wanted.  Maybe what he had was good enough.  But one thing was worrying at him, nudging hard at the back of his awareness.  "You said you all know me.  I've been here, but I don't remember it.  I mean...I do...but I don't."

"You were very young the last time you were here.  We know you.  We all know you."  The wizened old smile, so full of many decades, lit the old man's face again as he reached across to slap Tom's knee.  "And if you clear your head and stop thinking so hard about it, you'll know us too."

 

 

Lunch was eaten mostly in silence;  the man's wife put food in front of the boys, urging them to eat, feeding them till they stopped on their own.  Finally he spoke again, steepling his hands in front of his face, his elbows on the table as he fixed the dark haired boy with an intense stare.

"You were born during the eclipse.  The moon went black the night the big wolf's little wolf was birthed.  Son of the penumbra, that was you."

Tom narrowed his eyes, listening.

"Not here, though - you weren't born here.  You were born a long way from here, in a place where your father didn't belong."  He pointed at him.  "You carry that place in your voice.  It's something you keep because it's a part of you, but that part gets smaller and smaller as you get older and closer to where you belong."

"Do I belong here?"

"You're a  citizen of earth, passing time here but always looking for home.  No, you don't belong here.  You're only ever going to belong in a place that you make for yourself.   _That_ will be your home."

Tom's face fell.  He had thought that maybe, _maybe,_ he was close, even though his heart hadn't felt attached to this place.  He couldn't hide the tears that wet his eyes or the painful crack that broke his voice.  "How will I know where that is?"

"When you leave a place and find yourself sad to be gone from it.  That place.   _That'll_   be home.  And it might not even be a place."  He glanced at Chris.  "It could be a person, or a series of people.  Your heart will know when it sees it."

Tom stared at his hands, feeling oddly detached as he watched a single teardrop splash across his knuckles.  It clung there to his skin for a moment before sliding slowly down to his wrist.  When he looked up, he saw Chris staring at it too.

 

 

Lunch was finished and the dishes were cleared;  the old man, Creek he'd insisted they call him just as Tom knew he would, left the room and came back with a little wrapped bundle sitting on his palm.

"This is yours.  Your granddaddy left it to your father and your father came back here to leave it to you.  Said he'd lost you but you would find yourself, and when you did you would know to come here."  He reached out and took Tom's hand, turning it palm up to place the wadded cloth on it.  It was surprisingly heavy.

"What is it?"

"Your birthright.  Belongs to the earth it came from, a gift from the ground that takes our weight as we travel this place.  The earthly manifestation of the color of the moon when it woke from its eclipse."

Tom wrapped his long fingers around the bundle, feeling its shape, weighing the elder's words.  "If it belongs to the earth, what am I supposed to do with it?"

"You'll know when the time comes."

He felt like he understood, and when he looked up at the old man again, he nodded.

"Thank you."

 

 

His wife came in quietly, clutching a small container that she pushed into Tom's other hand.  Her sweet smile tugged at his heart and he tried to remember a word, something he felt like he had probably called her once, a long time ago - but it wouldn't come to him, so he quickly leaned in and kissed her cheek instead.

"You were always such a sweet boy," she said, her hand coming up to touch his face.  "You loved these when you were little."

He looked down at the package in his hand, feeling excited, though he couldn't figure out why.

 

 

They were a half a day's ride toward home when Chris felt Tom sleeping against his back and decided it was time to stop for the night.  A muddy creekbed led them up a rough road to a spot at the base of the mountain, bouncing them till Tom was awake and complaining about his ass being sore;  he tightened his grip around Chris's middle and laid his head against his back again, burrowing in against him.  It was as good a place as any to stop, a small clearing and level ground, surrounded by trees - a safe place to sleep, maybe not terribly comfortable but better than on the bike.  He parked and climbed off the dusty Harley as Tom staggered sleepily to the sloped trunk of a tree and began rummaging through the worn out backpack.

All they'd brought with them was in it...their blanket, a crumpled road map, a spare tee shirt that they took turns wearing.  A little bit of money and the antibiotics Meredith had insisted that Tom keep taking. And now two small packages, both still untouched.

"Are you gonna open it?"

Carefully, slowly, Tom unwrapped the little bundle Creek had given him.  As the faded cloth fell away, a brilliant light shone in reflection off the lump sitting in his hand as the last of the setting sun hit it.

"Holy shit, is that silver?"

Tom stared at it, nodding like he'd known all along. _The color of the moon when it awoke from its eclipse._

"Yeah."

"What are you gonna do with it?"

"I don't know.  Just have it, I guess.  It belongs to the earth, remember?"

Chris laughed, nodding.  He'd known he was going to say that.

"What's in the other one?"

Tom picked up the container the woman had given him, turning it over in his hands and listening to the thumping sound from inside.  A broad smile crossed his face as he opened it.

"Rock candy."

 

 

Neither of them said much the next day, traveling as long as they could between stops and only pulling over to eat or sleep.  Tom seemed to be lost in thoughts that he didn't want to share, and Chris was never one to take what wasn't offered.

They slept in a field that night, under some trees where they had a view of the highway but the passing cars weren't likely to see them.  As Tom scooted back against Chris and the older boy put his arms around him, letting him press to him for warmth under the light blanket, his hand went up under their makeshift pillow to hold Tom's.  The younger boy's fingers were caressing the big lump of silver like a talisman.

_A citizen of earth, passing time here but always looking for home._  That was him, no doubt about it.  The old man had known he was coming and Tom had known where to go.  Not much had ever made sense about the boy, but this new round of nonsense, instead of making the conundrum of him even more confusing, just somehow cleared it all up.  Tom was something else, _other,_  he belonged nowhere and to nobody...like a stray wearing a worn out collar, but you couldn't quite read the writing on the tag.

But he would keep him for as long as he could, until someone came calling for him.

 

 

_To be continued..._  

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Original artwork ~ Penumbraluna ~ done by me :)


	10. Pitone

 

 

 **Koi no yokan ~** **The feeling you get when you meet someone for the first time and think you’re going to fall in love with them.**

 

**Pitone: ᐱᑐᓀ - Plains Cree word meaning _I wish it will be. I hope it will happen._ Future tense**

 

**Sâkihitowin: ᓵᑭᐦᐃᑐᐃᐧᐣ - The act of being in love**

 

****************************************************************************************

 

 

Tom turned seventeen that Spring, but he didn't tell anyone his birthday had come and gone.  Birthdays meant nothing to him;  the last memory he had of any type of celebration of his birth had been nearly a decade ago, a fleeting recollection of a cake and his father singing to him in Cree.  It had resulted in a fight with his mother, as usual...she had no patience for _that nonsense_  and he had spent the rest of the afternoon on the roof, until his dad had climbed up with a slab of cake and they'd eaten it together.  That was all he remembered, and it was the last birthday his father had spent with them.

He'd taken another growth spurt and was taller than Chris now, and though he was still lanky and lean, he was beginning to fill out enough that people stepped back from him.

"Do I look mean?" he asked Chris one afternoon, confusion clouding his face.  A customer at the shop had apologized profusely and scrambled to get out of his way when Tom came up behind him, and the man's slightly startled demeanor had bothered him - mostly because he found it strangely, oddly, empowering.

"Yeah, you do."

Meredith had seen the momentary look of dismay that flashed across his face and leaned over to squeeze his fingers.  "You look like an angel, sweetheart."

Chris had rolled his eyes and kicked him under the table.

 

There were girls, lots of them, for both boys, but more so for Tom;  he often wondered how he could be so fiercely attracted to females and still want to curl up next to Chris at night, but it wasn't something he questioned so much as just accepted.  They didn't fuck anymore - they hadn't since Canada.  Tom had come home with less of a physical need and more of an emotional one, a need that Chris sensed without having to be told, and the kisses and touches that had once led them to the heat of each other's bodies now settled into a warm, comforting closeness that helped Tom sleep and gave Chris the satisfaction of knowing that he was still what his friend needed most.

The girls weren't so much a distraction or validation as a true needful thing, a connecting of emotions and feelings more than a connecting of bodies, a fleeting act that smoothed down the edges of his ragged soul for however long he could convince a girl to stay with him.  He knew he was searching for something, perhaps to replace what he was growing away from, and though the arms that held him and the bodies that shared themselves with him each gave him a contentment and satisfaction that he'd never felt in life, it became apparent to the boy that there was something _else,_ something _more,_ something bigger that he wasn't going to find in such a random search.  Something that he kept his hand out for, but that no one seemed able to lay in his palm.

_Your heart will know when it sees it._

He believed what the elder had told him.  He stopped searching and just existed, content to allow whatever it was, whatever he needed, to wander across his path on its own.  He could be satisfied with what he had, sure in the belief that the old man had known what he was talking about.   _Your heart will know when it sees it._

 

And so he made his own way, as he'd always been content to do.

 

Tom was nineteen the next time he crawled into Chris's bed.  

Meredith's ashes sat outside the bedroom door, a little silver urn that neither boy considered to be her.  If ashes returned to ashes and dust returned to dust, she'd returned to starlight the moment she'd closed her eyes.  They climbed out the window onto the roof that night and sat huddled together against the chill, and as morning broke the solemn line of black across the horizon and the last of the stars began to flicker out, they each took a handful of ash and tossed it toward the sky.

 

************************************************

 

On his twenty first birthday, a courier asked for him at the front desk of the garage.  Chris was shop foreman now and pointed toward where Tom was disassembling a carburetor, watching protectively from the front as a letter was handed over and signed for.  Tom stood staring at it for a long time, turning it over in his hands just once before a look of confusion and then consternation crossed his face.

"This isn't me," he said simply, trying to hand the letter back.  "I'm not a Heyworth, my last name is Hemberley."

The courier shook his head and took a step back, hands up, carefully avoiding touching the thick envelope.

"I don't care what you call yourself, my employer knows that's you."  Turning to leave, noticing the big blond foreman approaching, he glanced back just long enough to say, "I'd read it if I was you.   _Mister Heyworth."_

 

************************************************

 

The boys stood silently next to each other in the street, staring up at the now dark sign that bore the younger boy's first name.  It had always been a joke between them, something to bullshit about every time they walked past, ever since they were teenagers and far too young to set foot inside - that one day they would buy it with the money they earned working summers at the garage and run the place together.  The proprietor had given them cold beers in the alley in payment for odd jobs for so long that it had felt like a death when the old man told them, early that Spring, that he was closing his doors.

But the boys were men now, and it was the youngest's birthday, a birthday whose date he had finally shared with his friend after no small amount of threatening and at least one shove hard enough to nearly put him through a wall.

He had a letter in his pocket that he hadn't had time to think about yet.

He was officially an adult, but still felt like the boy that had hitchhiked from Michigan with nothing but a crumpled up wanted poster with his own face on it in an otherwise empty backpack.

"Still gonna buy me that whiskey?"

The bigger boy laughed, side eyeing him mischievously, wondering if he was going to share whatever news had been inside that thick letter.  But one shared secret was enough for this day, and he was happy to finally be celebrating his brother's birthday.

"You do realize it's purely symbolic, since you've been drinking since you were fifteen?"

The dark haired boy shrugged, a grin lighting up his face.  "Like I care."

 

************************************************

 

Later that Fall the sign was lit again, this time with its second namesake behind the bar.  The lonely, angry boy - now a less lonely, less angry man - had finally found himself, had built a family of his own choosing to love and be loved by, but still considered himself a permanent resident of nowhere despite his name on the outside of the building.  He wasn't home yet.

_Your heart will know when it sees it._

He was beginning to think his heart was blind.

 

His best friend, the man he called brother, reached over and tapped his shoulder.

"Did you see that girl that just came in with Sam?"

"The little redhead?"

"Yup."

"Yeah...I saw her."  He tried to keep his eyes down and not stare, not let on that he was looking, but Chris saw his face.

"Fuckin' lucky Sam, huh."

He glanced toward the girl again, watching as she took her coat off and hung it beside the door.  "Yeah...fuckin' lucky Sam."

 

And in that moment, he knew.  There would still be a bit of time before he could slip the keys into his pocket, but he knew.  His heart knew.

He was home.

 

 

**~~~~~The End~~~~~**

 

 

 

 

                                                          

 

 

                                                        


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